"O God!" whispered the old woman. "Yet I may not even put my arms around his neck!"
From that time onwards Vasili Ivanitch began to make cautious attempts to question Bazarov concerning his work, his health, and his friend Arkady; but always Bazarov returned reluctant, indifferent replies, and once, when his father was for introducing the foregoing topics, said irritably:
"Why are you for ever tiptoeing around me? Your present manner is even worse than your former one."
"There, there—I did not mean anything," was poor Vasili Ivanitch's reply.
Political allusions proved equally fruitless. For instance, when Vasili Ivanitch was seeking to engage his son's interest on the score of the impending emancipation of the serfs and progress in general, the other muttered carelessly:
"Yesterday, when passing through the courtyard, I heard some peasant lads singing, not one of the good old songs, but I The age of truth is coming in, when hearts shall glow with love.' There's progress for you!"
Occasionally Bazarov would repair to the village, and, in his usual bantering fashion, enter into conversation with some peasant.
"Well," he said to a muzhik, "pray expound to me your views on life. For they tell me that in you lie the whole strength and the whole future of Russia—that you are going to begin a new epoch in our history, and to give us both a real language and new laws."
The peasant made no reply at the moment. Then he said:
"We might do all that if first we had a new chapel here."